Last week marked the third anniversary of space-rap visionary J Dilla's death, and his influence over younger beatmakers like Kanye West and Black Milk probably looms larger now than it ever has. So it makes sense for Rapster Records, the company responsible for those compilations of sampled material from Daft Punk and Massive Attack records, to...

MF Doom has a new name now: DOOM. All caps. He insists. He also wants his album title spelled that way. So just to make sure I keep him happy, I'm going to write this whole news story in all caps. BACK IN 2007, THE INDIE-RAP ENIGMA SET OFF MASSIVE CONSIPRACY THEORIES... Jesus Christ. That's so annoying. I can't do it. Sorry. Back in 2007, th...

While not quite at Chinese Democracy levels of will-this-record-ever-come-out-and-do-we-still-care like Dr. Dre's Detox, Raekwon's Only Built 4 Cuban Linx 2 is long-awaited and much-anticipated, to say the least. The two albums he has released since Only Built 4 Cuban Linx came out in 1995 (Immobilarity and The Lex Diamond Story) have been met w...

There's been no shortage of posthumous releases directly from and otherwise related to the late James "J Dilla" Yancey recently, but the newest one is especially close to home, as in Dilla's childhood home. The record is called Yancey Boys, and it is the debut album from John "Illa J" Yancey, Dilla's younger brother by 12 years.Yancey Boys featu...

Photo by Chris WoodcockMadlib just keeps on pummeling us with more releases than we can handle, and yet, we try to handle them anyway. In his latest blast of tunes, Madlib has put together an even newer Beat Konducta album than the one that comes out on vinyl on November 11 (moved from October 28), as well as a companion EP to a forthcoming art ...